White Sox stay with it, take down Astros in season opener
All in all, not a bad way to launch the new season.
Overcoming one failure after another with runners in scoring position, some sloppy baserunning and a costly wild pitch, the White Sox kept their heads in the game Thursday night and came away with a 3-2 win over the Astros in Houston.
"That was great," Sox right-hander Dylan Cease told reporters after making his first Opening Day start and overwhelming the Astros. "Just the way we won it, too. We had so many opportunities and we just kept fighting and finally we did it at the end. There couldn't be a better start to the season than that."
Not only are the Astros the defending World Series champions, they are difficult to beat at home - and they came in with 10 straight wins in season openers.
Houston was positioned to make it 11 in a row after Yordan Alvarez scored on Aaron Bummer's wild pitch in the seventh inning to break a scoreless tie.
The Sox answered right back in the eighth on Yasmani Grandal's solo homer, and Andrew Vaughn finally came through with a clutch hit in the ninth inning.
The White Sox were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position before Vaughn's 2-run double decided the outcome.
"We were getting guys on and not getting them in," Vaughn said. "In that last at-bat I said, 'Hey, I've got to get it done.'"
With Liam Hendriks on the injured list while getting treatment for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Reynaldo Lopez pitched the ninth inning and got the save despite giving up a 442-foot home run to Alvarez.
"I was so nervous," said Lopez, who was pumping 100-mph fastballs throughout the inning. "I tried to calm down and I think next time I will be better."
Cease was even better than he was last season, when he finished second in American League Cy Young voting.
Riding a biting slider and dominant fastball, Cease allowed 1 run on 2 hits in 6⅓ innings and piled up 10 strikeouts.
"That was about as sharp as I've ever been," Cease said. "Really, the last couple weeks I've been really locked in so I just followed that process and trusted in it."
Managing his first game for the White Sox after taking over for Tony La Russa, Pedro Grifol said his players put him in a cart and pushed him into the shower while spraying him with shaving cream after his first win.
"It was fun," Grifol said. "It was a great game all the way around. From the first inning to the last inning, there were a lot of moving parts. These guys played great, man. They responded, they had great energy and it was a really well-fought game."